Wednesday, November 12, 2014

I sometimes make fun of myself by using the phrase "like a blinding flash" to describe a moment of "realization". Usually I'm referring sarcastically to a thought about something obvious. In the case of the digital painting below, I really mean it. As I've stated elsewhere on this blog, I have been fooling around with a $20 fractal generator, Fractal Domains. I don't know anything about the math of fractals, so when I plug numbers into Fractal Domains, I'm flying blind. I don't know what's going to pop-up on the screen when I hit the return button. And that's good from my point of view. I'm doing this because I don't know what's around the next corner, which keeps it interesting... for me, at least. When this image appeared, it was, in fact, like a blinding flash.

When I manipulate fractals in Photoshop, I work in layers and experiment with the possibilities of interaction between them. I just completed a series of 10 pictures based on the same fractal image (created with Fractal Domains software). The difference between the images results from the way the Photoshop layers interact. Here are 5 of the 10 images. These are meant to be printed fairly large... 64" on the width and ideally, all ten would be displayed together.

Below is an example of the odd spacial things that can happen in fractal land. To find this kind of stuff you have to look around the edges of the fractal and zoom way in. This particular piece was finished by manipulating three layers of the same image in Photoshop. There are two other versions with different palettes. One of the things I am currently doing is limiting my image manipulations to the overall, edge to edge. From the Buddhist perspective (or the ecological) this refers to the interdependence and interpenetration of all things in one great web of relations. Whatever subsidiary shapes and colors emerge are a result of the defining fractal math and the edge to edge manipulation of layers.

The posts above and the speak peace may represent the start of something new. I never know. The test is if I keep doing the new thing for any length of time. In any case, this is essentially a refinement of what I have been doing for a while. I'm focusing on what can be done with fractals and Photoshop manipulations and eliminating overlaid 3-D shapes etc. So for the time being, at least, the Triple Zero figure has been zeroed-out. Another way of looking at this, is that instead of creating indeterminate narratives around Triple-Z, I am making pictures that find their own narratives, some of which I have visited before. For example, I did a study for a painting to be called "speak peace" around 30 years ago. It didn't get painted then. I was quite surprised when it appeared on my screen yesterday in a different form.